The customs toll that the United States has imposed on steel imports has ended up strangling Tubos Reunidos, a Basque company that is going through one of the worst moments of its 134 years of manufacturing activity and urgently needs a solution to save its continuity. Last year it lost 71.3 million euros, accumulated a debt of 263 million and its sales prospects are very pessimistic. The crisis that the manufacturer of seamless steel tubes is going through has led its management to present a viability plan that includes, among other traumatic measures, the dismissal of 301 of its 1,300 workers and the closure of the Amurrio steel mill (Álava). “If there is no agreement before Easter, the future of the company is in danger,” says a company representative. The workers maintain a thread of hope: «We do not give anything for lost. This is something cyclical and it could happen that the 300 colleagues who now want to be thrown out onto the streets are needed,» says Andrés García, who this year celebrates 24 years in the factory. The decline of Tubos Reunidos is due to several factors, a sum of setbacks that are framed in a very unfavorable international context for their business. The White House’s tariff policy is not the only cause of the economic collapse of the steel company, although it has had a very negative impact on its fall. High production costs, a very heavy liability, a notable drop in demand for steel, energy shortages in Spain, strong competition from low-cost countries and the depreciation of the dollar have all played against Tubos Reunidos’ business, which has been struggling for a long time: «In reality, the company has been doing very badly for the last 10 years,» the steel firm points out. But there is no doubt that Donald Trump’s decision to increase the tariff to 50% since last June has had a substantial impact on the loss of market in that country, the company’s main export destination. Its sales there in 2023 and 2024 accounted for almost 50% of total turnover. It is not the first time that Trump has stood in his way, although not with the gravity of the current moment. In 2018, US tariffs also caused a cataclysm for the Basque firm. Then 157 jobs were lost and it was also decided to concentrate all the steelwork’s activity in Amurrio and dispense with the one that also operated in Trapagaran (Bizkaia).Workers from Tubos Reunidos gathered on February 26 in Bilbao to protest the ERE presented by the Basque company. LUIS TEJIDO (EFE)Then the pandemic arrived, with very adverse effects on his business. Tubos Reunidos needed the rescue of the State in 2021 through the State Society of Industrial Participations (Sepi). It injected 112.8 million in participatory loans that it is still paying with a high interest cost and whose maturity is close, in 2028. In the following years, the company also failed to get afloat. The rising energy bill, high salary costs (70,000 euros, according to the company), paralysis in the steel market and fierce competition in which China has entered with great force. «It is not an easy scenario. We have had negative results for many years,» explains a spokesperson for the pipeline. The latest data offered to the union representation show a strong deterioration of the firm. Its turnover last year stood at 365.7 million. The Ebitda was negative 22.8 million and the net result also registered red numbers (71.3 million). These data are provisional, since the accounts have yet to be audited and the loss of assets affected by the fall in activity in the US has not been computed, so the losses will be greater, as reported by the company to the CNMV at the beginning of February. 2025 was also the year in which TR got rid of the plant it had in Houston, where it carried out the finishing processes for the tubes it manufactures in the Basque Country. “Trump’s punishment [a las importaciones] «It is causing all of us who were in the United States to go to other markets,» says the management. In this «commercial diversification» strategy, the bet is to open up to Canada, Germany, India and the Middle East. Another key front to clean up the accounts requires reducing a high level of leverage, with a debt that has escalated from 234.3 to 263.2 million in the last year, which quintuples the company’s stock market value (51.2 million). The restructuring will not be complete, according to the management team, without adopting measures aimed at reducing costs, among which the «gradual interruption of the activity of the Amurrio steelworks, the outsourcing of the production of billet and ingot, adapting it to the behavior of demand and the departure of personnel linked to the production process» are being considered. The lack of sufficient activity due to the drop in orders has meant that the cost of production has skyrocketed and it is currently «unviable» to compete in the market. Tubos Reunidos wants to eliminate 301 jobs (87 temporary and the rest permanent). Of the total, 274 employees are assigned to the Amurrio plant and only 27 belong to Trapagaran. The management improved its offer again this past Thursday in the fourth meeting on the ERE in order to “further minimize the social impact” of the layoffs. per year to eventual and greater compensation for those who leave voluntarily. “Looking for someone to blame is not the most important thing, but things have been done badly in recent years and the debt is devouring us. This is not going to be fixed by throwing people out onto the streets. What we have to do now is look for a solution,» comments Andrés García, president of the works council. The Basque Government has asked the central company to get involved in the resolution of this crisis through a «flexibility» of the conditions of the Sepi loan that is suffocating Tubos Reunidos. The Minister of Industry of the Basque Government, Mikel Jauregi, believes Madrid’s intervention is necessary because, as he has said, «no one buys an apartment with a mortgage five times greater than its value.» The plan layoffs at Tubos Reunidos, if finally consummated, will aggravate the deindustrialization process that affects the Alava region of Ayala, where its headquarters is located, a cursed valley that in the last decade has endured a rampant deindustrialization process and already suffers an unemployment rate of 14% at the closing of Aceros de Llodio in 1992 (564 workers) or at the departure of 316 Tubacex workers. A year later, in this environment, firms such as Valvospain, the Lidl warehouse or Glavista have disappeared, apart from staff reductions in other companies, such as Maderas de Llodio. Major factories such as Tubacex, Vidrala or Amurrio Ferrocarril y Equipos are still standing.
